LEGOs are one of my favorite therapy tools. They provide nearly endless opportunities for language development, and are a great reinforcement as well!
This is far from a complete list of ways to use LEGOs for speech therapy. They really can be used to target almost any goal. Use these ideas as inspiration and see how you can use LEGOs to best meet your child’s needs.
1. Speech Sounds
Drill work is boring. That’s why I recommend that you practice it with something highly motivating for your child.
If your child loves LEGOs, this can be a very easy way to make practicing speech sounds more fun.
For every sound they practice, give them 3 more LEGOs to add to their creation. Play around with the sounds-to-LEGO ratio till you find a balance that is motivating for your child, but also maximizes the amount of sounds they’re practicing.
Another option is to use the LEGOs as your target words.
This will only work for certain speech sounds. But if your child’s sound is one of them, it’s a great way to practice without them feeling like they’re doing hardly any work!
To do this, just emphasize the sounds that can be used to describe certain LEGOs. Have your child ask for the Long LEGO, the SHort LEGO, the Red LEGO, yeLLow LEGO, the blacK LEGO, etc.
2. Sorting
LEGOs provide a fantastic variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. Dump out a pile of them and help your child sort them to work on learning those basic language concepts.
For an easier task, give your child one category at a time. For example, “Make a pile of all the blue LEGOs”. Then move on to the next color once they’ve finished.
If that’s difficult, give them one to three blue LEGOs to start, and have them search for the rest. Sometimes watching you look through the pile and model how the task works is all they need to be able to finish it independently.
If that’s too easy, try adding more detail to the category. For example, “Make a pile with all the small blue LEGOs”. You can also try having them sort multiple categories at a time. For example, “Separate all the LEGOs by their color”.
3. Increasing Sentence Length
If you have trouble getting your child to communicate, try taking something they want and putting it out of reach.
I know, it sounds mean. But I promise it isn’t.
Push the LEGOs out of reach, and make your child request each piece that they want.
This may mean making eye contact with you and then gesturing to the LEGOs. It may mean saying “blue LEGO”. Or, it might mean saying “Can I have 5 red LEGOs please.”
It doesn’t matter what level your child is at. It matters that they’re being gently pushed to communicate slightly above their level of comfort.
To encourage further growth, try expanding slightly on whatever request they use. If they gestured, say “LEGO” or “LEGO please” as you hand it to them. If they used 2 words, try adding a third, like “one blue LEGO” or “big blue LEGO”. Or, if they are using full sentences, respond with another example of a full sentence, such as “Here are your 5 red LEGOs”.
4. Following Directions
Oh the many ways you can practice following directions with LEGOs!
This can be as simple as saying “Give mama a LEGO”. However, there are several more complex language concepts that can be targeted as well:
- Quantitative concepts: This is working on numbers. “Give me two LEGOs”, or “Make a tower of five LEGOs”.
- Spatial concepts: This is working on position words, like on, under, or next to. Start with one LEGO on the table, and hand your child a new LEGO with instructions like “Put this LEGO on top” or “Put this LEGO behind it”.
- Temporal concepts: This is working on when you do things. “Add the white LEGO after you add the red LEGO”. (If you are using concepts such as colors or shapes in these directions, make sure your child has mastered those concepts. You can’t accurately assess their comprehension of temporal concepts if it could be the colors causing the error).
- Semantic concepts: These are features such as color, shape, and size. “Make a red tower” or “Give me a blue LEGO”.
For more complex directions, you can combine multiple concepts. For example, “Put the blue LEGO under the yellow LEGO”. Only move on to this when your child is doing relatively well with the included concepts on their own.
5. Describing and Answering Questions
Ask your child to describe what they’re going to build (what it will be, what it will look like, what it’s for).
Ask your child to describe the process of building it (what pieces they need, what they do first, what they’re going to do next).
When they’re done, ask your child to describe what they built (how it looks now that it’s finished, how it’s the same or different from how they planned).
If your child struggles even slightly with describing, this task will also give them the opportunity to answer questions.
As they describe, ask follow up questions that will help them provide more details. Ask them things like what color it will be, whether they need the big piece or small piece, why they need that piece, what’s going to happen when they put this piece on.
It will look like a natural conversation, but you’ll be targeting two very important language skills at the same time.
If you liked these ideas, please share this with your friends!
